New Energy Vehicles, 5G Mobile Phones The "Spring" of Third-Generation Semiconductors

 From fixed-line communications and fuel cars, to 5G smart phones and new energy vehicles, power electronics has become part of our lives, and the transformation of this process can not be separated from the wide bandwidth semiconductors - third-generation semiconductors.
 
  Third-generation semiconductors have a high breakdown field, high saturation electron velocity, high thermal conductivity, high electron density, high mobility and other characteristics, so the industry known as solid-state light source, power electronics, microwave radio frequency devices, "core" and optoelectronics and microelectronics industries, "the new engine! ". At present, the development of better wide-band semiconductor is mainly SiC and GaN.

 
  According to a report by IHS IMS Research, in the next decade, driven by the demand for power supplies, solar photovoltaic (PV) inverters and industrial motors, the emerging SiC and GaN power semiconductor market will grow steadily at a rate of 18%, and it is expected that by 2022, global sales of SiC and GaN power components will increase significantly to $2.8 billion from $143 million in 2012. a significant increase to $2.8 billion.
 
  As electric vehicles and autonomous driving are the two major driving factors driving the automotive market forward. There are three major applications in automobiles that are power related, namely chargers, DC-DC converters and traction inverters. Of these three applications, the traction inverter is by far the one that can benefit the most from GaN and SiC technology. This is because the use of GaN and SiC devices reduces the weight of the vehicle, improves energy efficiency, and allows electric vehicles to travel longer distances while using smaller batteries and cooling systems.
 
  The demand for SiC power devices is skyrocketing, driven by the development of new energy electric vehicles in recent years. According to Yole, the SiC power device business reached $302 million in 2017, up 22% from $248 million in 2016. The Tesla Model 3, which employs SiC MOSFET modules, realized capacity growth, and Yole estimates that by 2023, the SiC power semiconductor market will reach $1.5 billion.

 
  Thomas Neyer, Technical Fellow and head of the SiC development area at ON Semiconductor, said, "The SiC market today is already a $350 million market and is expected to grow to $1.3 billion over the next five years."
 
  In addition to the focus on new energy electric vehicles, smartphones are also one of the key concerns, and their efficiency, performance, and size are in dire need of constant improvement.
 
  In the smartphone built-in component size, domestic enterprises Ningbo Semiconductor IC and Suzhou Yizui Semiconductor on the joint announcement of the realization of gallium arsenide RF front-end module wafer-level microsystem heterogeneous integration, which is currently the industry's most compact RF front-end device, mainly for the 4G and 5G smartphone market, to meet the demand for further miniaturization of its RF front-end module.
 
  In the 5G era, the demand for third-generation semiconductors is rising, because by then a smartphone not only needs to be thin and lightweight, but also may require 16 PA (power amplifier) chips, plus the need for more base stations, large-scale antennas (Massive MIMO), filters and so on.